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eve11Main Post and Chapter Index
**
02 August, 1969
0800 hours
Two months.
Walking confidently behind her military escort under the bright Nevada sun, River Song tried not to linger on that thought. She was here now, and that's what was important. But it had been two months since the Doctor had been captured. The last time she'd seen him, they'd been at a dead end, cornered by the American Secret Service in the east wing of the White House in Washington D.C. Trying to talk their way out of the situation had already gotten Rory concussed and Amy shot in the arm. River had just melted her vortex manipulator into slag in an attempt to jump too many people too quickly over too short a distance--a last ditch effort to get back to the secluded alley off of H street where the TARDIS was waiting for them.
His decision had been swift and irrevocable. As the guards closed in on their position, the Doctor had simply kissed her on the cheek, offered a quick instruction--"Take the south exit"--and fled back into the lion's den, straight toward the Oval Office, to give them time to escape. It was so early for him; he didn't know her well enough yet to trust that River should have been the one to go back. He'd known enough to entrust Amy and Rory to her care, and he may have guessed that River Song was not the kind of person to take self-sacrifice lightly. By the time she'd felt the sonic screwdriver in her hand and understood what was about to happen, she'd had no choice but to do as she was told.
She could hate him for that later--some time when they both remembered it, when she was more than just a mystery he had yet to puzzle out. Some time when Amy and Rory didn't look at her with no recognition in their eyes. For now, it was better to keep her past at a distance. The lifetimes she had lived prior to Berlin, nineteen-thirty-six, slept deeply in her mind, and they were the one set of artifacts that River didn't make a habit of exhuming or examining. She had never truly belonged to those times, and long ago she had learned the advantages of keeping them buried. She had anchored herself anew, to Luna University in the fifty-first century--and then to the blue box that sang through her thoughts in the depths of Stormcage, and to the madman who completed them both.
The TARDIS had gone into lockdown not long after the Doctor had disappeared. They could use the med bay to heal Amy's fractured wrist, and they could use the scanners and data banks to monitor communications. But the ship's psyche was distant and reserved. She wouldn't translate River's fifty-first century standard speech into the ancient English she'd spoken as a child, and she wouldn't budge into the Vortex, even under River's most patient and pleading piloting attempts. River loved the ship, of course, but her connection with the TARDIS would never be the same as a psychic link built over centuries of companionship. Rationally, she knew that the Doctor's mental "hand" never really left the TARDIS controls even when he seemed to turn them completely over to her. She had always had the luxury to ignore that fact--until now. Now the ship was anchored in the current time stream like a bridge strut in rapids, and that couldn't be a good sign.
Two months. Two months was nothing, she told herself. Anyone could last two months in prison. Anyone . . .
She forced the thought away.
"He's still uncooperative?" she asked as they walked.
"Well, he's staying put, for now, at least," her base escort, a Sergeant Kevin James, tersely informed her. It did little to hide the frustration and anger seething under the words. James was head of project security, and the Doctor was never an easy assignment.
River nodded in acknowledgement, keeping her true feelings at a greater distance than James did his.
Her assignment hadn't been easy either. It had taken six weeks just to find him. Each day, the scanners had scrolled inexorably through events in ancient American history books--the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick, Neil Armstrong's iconic moonwalk--until they'd intercepted a top secret communication from Groom Lake, looking for an alien tech consultant ("That's, consultant for alien tech, and not, ah, tech consultant who's an alien", Rory had clarified) for a special project. Base security requested an outside opinion on some equipment being used in a mobile laboratory, and there were several remarks that led River to conclude it was for prisoner containment and study.
More digging--and a few well-placed hammer strikes to the console--had unearthed a top secret dossier, already over a month old.
High security and flight risk led to remanding of Detainee #234-DS-8 from DC area to Groom Lake facility. In the past ten days of interrogation, detainee has provided no information beyond the demonstration of seventeen distinct vulnerabilities in the base's procedural and physical security, by means of nearly escaping through each one. Exploits include but are not limited to: creative use of found materials (bed springs, bar soap and a stolen pen), discovery of camera dead zone time spans, taking advantage of critical resources (jeeps, refueling stations) placed too near prisoner transport routes, aural keypad pattern recognition, and compromising human guards through a combination of seemingly innocuous communication and duplicity.
"We are grateful for any assistance and expertise Van Statten Industries can offer." James said. "But watch yourself, Doctor Hamilton. He's not as docile as he seems."
"I'll stay on my toes," River answered.
It had taken another two weeks to exploit weaknesses in the government sub-contracting infrastructure and to fabricate River's identity for the rescue mission. The TARDIS contained detailed records of a tech warehousing company in Utah, a ten-hour drive from the secluded Groom Lake facility, that had a funding source traced through a company that by the 22nd-century was so well known as a U.S. government black-ops clearinghouse, that it was literally a dictionary word meaning "slush fund." Intercepting phone calls, and forging an identity and a set of official orders for River, had been the easy part.
Then, River had hot-wired a 1967 step-van delivery truck, they muscled the TARDIS face up into the back, and set off across the country. River spent the three-day trip flattening her vowels and practicing a neutral midwestern American English accent. Amy and Rory spent the time learning how to drive on the other side of the road. Now, Amy and Rory were waiting patiently with the TARDIS as close as they dared bring her, forty miles away at a public wildlife park along Nevada route 38, where they could blend in with weary cross-country tourists and adventurous families on day trips. Now it was all up to River.
Base security cleared River after a thorough search that divulged no weapons, chemicals, alien technological devices, or brainwave anomalies. She hadn't brought anything; if nothing else, they had known beforehand about the thorough security checks. That led to the other reason it had taken so long to get here: devising an escape plan.
She could feel the coil of the psychic switch she'd implanted at the back of her consciousness, even though she knew she couldn't activate it. It was the only secret weapon she could get past the security perimeter, and it had taken a monumental effort to get the TARDIS to co-operate even for this. Keyed through a quantum link to the TARDIS fast return systems, it was suitably jury-rigged to home in on River's location. All she had to do was find the right moment to transfer the switch to the Doctor's consciousness, and he could trigger it with a thought, bringing the TARDIS, Amy and Rory right to them. Less than thirty seconds alone, out of gunshot range or other imminent danger, should suffice.
They met two scientific liaisons, complete with white lab coats over their blue Air Force fatigues, after they passed through the N.R.O. perimeter. Major Charles Ogden was a tall, wiry man who looked to be military first, scientist second, from his crew cut and Air Force issue glasses. Specialist Henry Duvall was a smaller, stockier man with a dark five-o'clock shadow, who seemed more nervous around the ordnance at the checkpoint. He was probably an expert recruited from one of the think tanks: Pacific Northwest or Los Alamos National Laboratories being the closest. Experience told River he was the most likely human security vulnerability to exploit. There also seemed to be no love lost between James and the scientists; they barely acknowledged each others' presence before heading down into the bowels of the complex.
Following the descent from the main office and elevator bay, they walked past four rooms labeled "LABORATORY", then through a set of unmarked double doors requiring a badge and passcode, and then into a bright white corridor. The corridor was lined with yellow metal doors, each with reinforced glass windows at eye level. An official sign had been hung on the wall nearest the fourth door on the left, reading EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS: DO NOT INTERACT WITH SUBJECT. River set her jaw against the light-headed nausea that swept through her, but she couldn't keep those words from fueling the rage that had been kindled to a slow-simmering burn in the pit of her stomach ever since she'd first set eyes on that Top Secret report.
Detainee is known by the code name of "The Doctor"--a fact he shared with any and all thirty seconds after capture. Original assessment: heart defect, deadly aspirin allergy, and clinical diagnosis inconclusive between savant and paranoid schizophrenic. After consultation and re-evaluation, case has been transferred to the National Reconnaissance Office: directorate of Applied Extra-Terrestrial Research. If collaboration goes well, Area 51 of the Groom Lake Experimental Aircraft and Xenotech Research Facility can be expanded to a permanent laboratory for xenobiological studies.
It was one thing to read it on the TARDIS information console, and another to come face to face with the reality of the situation. But she could not afford to let her emotions take over, not here. A good soldier knew how to recognize situations where even the best tactical training in the universe would fail, and those situations included infiltrating underground laboratories twenty miles from nothing, surrounded by hundreds of armed, well-trained enemies. River quelled her rising fury by embracing her current role, putting on her best show of clinical detachment and pointing at the sign. "We're authorized for contact?" she asked.
"Of course, Doctor Hamilton," Ogden answered. He produced a thin electronic data pad, obviously no technology local to 1969 era Earth, from an oversized pocket and indicated it with a wave. "I checked out the resource card and equipment allocated to subject 36 at the perimeter. We've got him all to ourselves for the next three hours. Henry and I have come up with some hypotheses we want to test."
"Naturally, you'll want to get a look at the experimental conditions, and at the initial data collection," Duvall begrudgingly offered.
River's fingers itched for a sidearm. Patience, she reminded herself. Anyway, there was no need to torch this place, guns blazing, no matter how much she wanted to. If everything went according to plan, they would be out of Area 51 and back into the vortex in a few hours.
"Open it up," she said. The guards took up positions on either side of the door, and Ogden opened the cell by swiping the resource card across the lock and entering a three-stroke chorded key combination.
And there, finally, after two months of planning and searching, was the Doctor.
Dressed in olive drab scrubs, he was sitting on the side edge of a bunk in the corner, elbows on widespread knees, fingers interlocked over the top of his bent head, still as a statue. He didn't react to the door unlatching, but as it scraped open across the uneven corridor floor he slowly and deliberately unlaced his fingers, and looked up. In the harsh light River caught a flash of something--flat, round, black, metallic--at the nape of his neck, before his face came into view, and her breath caught in her throat.
He looked awful. His hair was long and unkempt, spiked at odd angles from where he'd been resting his fingers. His ragged beard seemed to have grown unchecked for weeks, and his half-lidded eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and fatigue. He frowned in their direction, furrowing his brow in concentration. His eyes--usually so bright, so focused--wandered the length and breadth of the doorway until he seemed to catch himself and blinked, staring blankly past Ogden, Duvall and James as they filed into the room. He didn't acknowledge River at all.
It was obvious he couldn't see a thing.
"Back again, are you?" he asked, sounding tired and intellectually bored. That was almost normal, but River could hear how his consonants were just slightly more accentuated and calculated, and how his cadence was just slightly slower than his usual speech patterns. Something--something else--was wrong. She watched as he tensed, fingers grabbing at the thin mattress by his side like an anchor, and closed his useless eyes. "And with someone new--?" he started.
Ogden immediately checked his data pad. Beside him, Duvall drew out a plastic stylus and vied for a chance to annotate the screen, eyes traveling back and forth from the Doctor to the readout. James left the scientists to their impromptu research summit and fished at his belt for a set of handcuffs. River simply stood at the doorway, in shocked silence.
The Doctor remained oblivious to the activity around him. His outward concentration receded as he reached some kind of realization, and he relaxed, straightening his arms at his sides and drumming curious fingers against the edge of the mattress. This time he did look directly at the doorway where River stood. He took a breath and gave a slow, sly smile.
"Hello, sweetie," he said.
Tension in the room snapped as Sergeant James took two steps and hit the Doctor hard on the cheek. "Show some respect!" he snarled. The Doctor was blindsided but absorbed the blow, falling backward onto his elbows.
River broke out of her daze and was at James' side in a heartbeat, catching his fist in the air as he brought it back again.
"Sergeant!" Ogden exclaimed.
James' eyes stayed focused on the Doctor, but River felt the trigger impulse of another blow leach out of his fist, and she let him shake his hand free of her grip. "I won't tolerate that kind of attitude toward women," James warned.
"And I don't need your chivalry," River said icily.
On the bunk, the Doctor brought a hand to his cheek, wincing and testing the spot of impact for blood. "Hello, Sergeant James," he added.
"Just watch your mouth," James replied.
Duvall glanced witheringly at the sergeant. "You know he can't hear you."
"I know he has a history of lying." James aimed his words at the Doctor, but received no recognition from him.
Duvall sighed, crossing the room. He chased the Doctor's hands from his face and bent his head forward, clinically but not gently, to reveal the disc at the back of his neck. It was roughly an inch in diameter, its polished titanium surface reflecting light from a series of raised radial serrations emanating from the flat centerpiece. The Doctor froze, sucking in a hiss of pain when Duvall's fingers traced the edge of the device. He twisted the bedsheets in his hands and strangled a cry, as Duvall explained, "He can't lie about this. We've shown you the readings."
"Please--" the Doctor gasped, all bravado gone from his voice. "Please stop that."
"Interesting," Duvall remarked, leaning closer. "There's no scar tissue at all." He brushed the center of the disc and this time the Doctor couldn't keep from crying out. He let out a grunt of shock and pain and a hissed "Stop!" extended to three trembling syllables.
"Henry, let him go," said Ogden.
Duvall shrugged and released him. The Doctor sat up immediately, smoothing his thin sleeves with a flick of his wrists and stopping his hand half-way toward the act of straightening a nonexistent bow tie. "Thank you. Much better." He sniffed to cover a shaky breath, and obediently held out his hands. "So, have we finished with the bickering and violence for today? Are we ready to go?"
His blank eyes looked right at River as he spoke, and her heart fell. Not yet, my love, she willed at him. There were too many people here, and too much uncertainty. But of course, she could communicate nothing to him. The only answer he received was James snapping cuffs around his wrists and hauling him up from the bunk.
"Get him to the lab," Ogden said to his colleague, then turned to the sergeant. "James, I'd like a word with you and Doctor Hamilton."
Duvall signaled the guards from their posts. James reluctantly handed the prisoner over and ushered them out.
"No need to rush," the Doctor muttered as he passed by. The sound of footsteps and clinking chains faded down the corridor as he was led away, and farther off, the Doctor's voice rose and resonated into an indistinct, blithe bellow of a chant or song. There was a buzz from the connecting door, and then they were gone.
Ogden turned to the sergeant in the ensuing silence. He was calm and collected, and obviously furious. "I would appreciate it if you refrained from damaging my experiments. I am of course willing to work with contracted experts, but we had a crucial reading back there that was interrupted by your… sensibilities."
"Sir," James countered. "This prisoner is patient, opportunistic, and dangerous. He has a history of devious and manipulative behavior--"
"I can see that, Sergeant. It took two weeks of interrogations for him to learn exactly how to push your buttons--a skill, I might add, which he continues to excel at." Ogden tapped the data pad against his hand. "Remind me what you learned in return?"
James brushed off the rebuke. "Major, I have the Colonel's authority on this matter. If something is wrong with your device it could be putting this whole base at risk! He's a completely unknown species--"
"SMM is proven technology, even for uncategorized aliens," Ogden said. "It's based on physiological constants. He can't subvert it."
"He's certainly subverting something!" James said. "He must have seen Doctor Hamilton in the doorway--"
"Impossible."
"He heard her footsteps then. Her heels--"
"Heels," Ogden repeated, looking down at River's shoes. Area 51 was no place for anything fancy; she was dressed in a business skirt, nylons, and military loafers.
"If not that, then how--?"
"We don't know!" Ogden finally exclaimed. "That's what we're trying to find out! Good God, man, we're trying to do good science here!"
Ogden ended the argument without officially pulling rank. He simply glared at Sergeant James, and let five seconds of silence speak for itself. With no further protests, he turned to River. "Despite what you may have heard from Colonel Caldwell's contingent," he indicated Sergeant James with a nod, "it's not a malfunction in the device. We're certain it's a sensory anomaly, possibly something completely new. We've controlled for everything else."
River took a moment to assimilate as much of this barrage of information as she could. She quickly catalogued facts, updated her list of current assets, crushed an irritating swell of rising panic, and then turned and smiled condescendingly at Sergeant James.
"Actually, I haven't been briefed on that yet," she said.
Ogden gave a short sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fantastic."
**
|Part 2
**
02 August, 1969
0800 hours
Two months.
Walking confidently behind her military escort under the bright Nevada sun, River Song tried not to linger on that thought. She was here now, and that's what was important. But it had been two months since the Doctor had been captured. The last time she'd seen him, they'd been at a dead end, cornered by the American Secret Service in the east wing of the White House in Washington D.C. Trying to talk their way out of the situation had already gotten Rory concussed and Amy shot in the arm. River had just melted her vortex manipulator into slag in an attempt to jump too many people too quickly over too short a distance--a last ditch effort to get back to the secluded alley off of H street where the TARDIS was waiting for them.
His decision had been swift and irrevocable. As the guards closed in on their position, the Doctor had simply kissed her on the cheek, offered a quick instruction--"Take the south exit"--and fled back into the lion's den, straight toward the Oval Office, to give them time to escape. It was so early for him; he didn't know her well enough yet to trust that River should have been the one to go back. He'd known enough to entrust Amy and Rory to her care, and he may have guessed that River Song was not the kind of person to take self-sacrifice lightly. By the time she'd felt the sonic screwdriver in her hand and understood what was about to happen, she'd had no choice but to do as she was told.
She could hate him for that later--some time when they both remembered it, when she was more than just a mystery he had yet to puzzle out. Some time when Amy and Rory didn't look at her with no recognition in their eyes. For now, it was better to keep her past at a distance. The lifetimes she had lived prior to Berlin, nineteen-thirty-six, slept deeply in her mind, and they were the one set of artifacts that River didn't make a habit of exhuming or examining. She had never truly belonged to those times, and long ago she had learned the advantages of keeping them buried. She had anchored herself anew, to Luna University in the fifty-first century--and then to the blue box that sang through her thoughts in the depths of Stormcage, and to the madman who completed them both.
The TARDIS had gone into lockdown not long after the Doctor had disappeared. They could use the med bay to heal Amy's fractured wrist, and they could use the scanners and data banks to monitor communications. But the ship's psyche was distant and reserved. She wouldn't translate River's fifty-first century standard speech into the ancient English she'd spoken as a child, and she wouldn't budge into the Vortex, even under River's most patient and pleading piloting attempts. River loved the ship, of course, but her connection with the TARDIS would never be the same as a psychic link built over centuries of companionship. Rationally, she knew that the Doctor's mental "hand" never really left the TARDIS controls even when he seemed to turn them completely over to her. She had always had the luxury to ignore that fact--until now. Now the ship was anchored in the current time stream like a bridge strut in rapids, and that couldn't be a good sign.
Two months. Two months was nothing, she told herself. Anyone could last two months in prison. Anyone . . .
She forced the thought away.
"He's still uncooperative?" she asked as they walked.
"Well, he's staying put, for now, at least," her base escort, a Sergeant Kevin James, tersely informed her. It did little to hide the frustration and anger seething under the words. James was head of project security, and the Doctor was never an easy assignment.
River nodded in acknowledgement, keeping her true feelings at a greater distance than James did his.
Her assignment hadn't been easy either. It had taken six weeks just to find him. Each day, the scanners had scrolled inexorably through events in ancient American history books--the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick, Neil Armstrong's iconic moonwalk--until they'd intercepted a top secret communication from Groom Lake, looking for an alien tech consultant ("That's, consultant for alien tech, and not, ah, tech consultant who's an alien", Rory had clarified) for a special project. Base security requested an outside opinion on some equipment being used in a mobile laboratory, and there were several remarks that led River to conclude it was for prisoner containment and study.
More digging--and a few well-placed hammer strikes to the console--had unearthed a top secret dossier, already over a month old.
High security and flight risk led to remanding of Detainee #234-DS-8 from DC area to Groom Lake facility. In the past ten days of interrogation, detainee has provided no information beyond the demonstration of seventeen distinct vulnerabilities in the base's procedural and physical security, by means of nearly escaping through each one. Exploits include but are not limited to: creative use of found materials (bed springs, bar soap and a stolen pen), discovery of camera dead zone time spans, taking advantage of critical resources (jeeps, refueling stations) placed too near prisoner transport routes, aural keypad pattern recognition, and compromising human guards through a combination of seemingly innocuous communication and duplicity.
"We are grateful for any assistance and expertise Van Statten Industries can offer." James said. "But watch yourself, Doctor Hamilton. He's not as docile as he seems."
"I'll stay on my toes," River answered.
It had taken another two weeks to exploit weaknesses in the government sub-contracting infrastructure and to fabricate River's identity for the rescue mission. The TARDIS contained detailed records of a tech warehousing company in Utah, a ten-hour drive from the secluded Groom Lake facility, that had a funding source traced through a company that by the 22nd-century was so well known as a U.S. government black-ops clearinghouse, that it was literally a dictionary word meaning "slush fund." Intercepting phone calls, and forging an identity and a set of official orders for River, had been the easy part.
Then, River had hot-wired a 1967 step-van delivery truck, they muscled the TARDIS face up into the back, and set off across the country. River spent the three-day trip flattening her vowels and practicing a neutral midwestern American English accent. Amy and Rory spent the time learning how to drive on the other side of the road. Now, Amy and Rory were waiting patiently with the TARDIS as close as they dared bring her, forty miles away at a public wildlife park along Nevada route 38, where they could blend in with weary cross-country tourists and adventurous families on day trips. Now it was all up to River.
Base security cleared River after a thorough search that divulged no weapons, chemicals, alien technological devices, or brainwave anomalies. She hadn't brought anything; if nothing else, they had known beforehand about the thorough security checks. That led to the other reason it had taken so long to get here: devising an escape plan.
She could feel the coil of the psychic switch she'd implanted at the back of her consciousness, even though she knew she couldn't activate it. It was the only secret weapon she could get past the security perimeter, and it had taken a monumental effort to get the TARDIS to co-operate even for this. Keyed through a quantum link to the TARDIS fast return systems, it was suitably jury-rigged to home in on River's location. All she had to do was find the right moment to transfer the switch to the Doctor's consciousness, and he could trigger it with a thought, bringing the TARDIS, Amy and Rory right to them. Less than thirty seconds alone, out of gunshot range or other imminent danger, should suffice.
They met two scientific liaisons, complete with white lab coats over their blue Air Force fatigues, after they passed through the N.R.O. perimeter. Major Charles Ogden was a tall, wiry man who looked to be military first, scientist second, from his crew cut and Air Force issue glasses. Specialist Henry Duvall was a smaller, stockier man with a dark five-o'clock shadow, who seemed more nervous around the ordnance at the checkpoint. He was probably an expert recruited from one of the think tanks: Pacific Northwest or Los Alamos National Laboratories being the closest. Experience told River he was the most likely human security vulnerability to exploit. There also seemed to be no love lost between James and the scientists; they barely acknowledged each others' presence before heading down into the bowels of the complex.
Following the descent from the main office and elevator bay, they walked past four rooms labeled "LABORATORY", then through a set of unmarked double doors requiring a badge and passcode, and then into a bright white corridor. The corridor was lined with yellow metal doors, each with reinforced glass windows at eye level. An official sign had been hung on the wall nearest the fourth door on the left, reading EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS: DO NOT INTERACT WITH SUBJECT. River set her jaw against the light-headed nausea that swept through her, but she couldn't keep those words from fueling the rage that had been kindled to a slow-simmering burn in the pit of her stomach ever since she'd first set eyes on that Top Secret report.
Detainee is known by the code name of "The Doctor"--a fact he shared with any and all thirty seconds after capture. Original assessment: heart defect, deadly aspirin allergy, and clinical diagnosis inconclusive between savant and paranoid schizophrenic. After consultation and re-evaluation, case has been transferred to the National Reconnaissance Office: directorate of Applied Extra-Terrestrial Research. If collaboration goes well, Area 51 of the Groom Lake Experimental Aircraft and Xenotech Research Facility can be expanded to a permanent laboratory for xenobiological studies.
It was one thing to read it on the TARDIS information console, and another to come face to face with the reality of the situation. But she could not afford to let her emotions take over, not here. A good soldier knew how to recognize situations where even the best tactical training in the universe would fail, and those situations included infiltrating underground laboratories twenty miles from nothing, surrounded by hundreds of armed, well-trained enemies. River quelled her rising fury by embracing her current role, putting on her best show of clinical detachment and pointing at the sign. "We're authorized for contact?" she asked.
"Of course, Doctor Hamilton," Ogden answered. He produced a thin electronic data pad, obviously no technology local to 1969 era Earth, from an oversized pocket and indicated it with a wave. "I checked out the resource card and equipment allocated to subject 36 at the perimeter. We've got him all to ourselves for the next three hours. Henry and I have come up with some hypotheses we want to test."
"Naturally, you'll want to get a look at the experimental conditions, and at the initial data collection," Duvall begrudgingly offered.
River's fingers itched for a sidearm. Patience, she reminded herself. Anyway, there was no need to torch this place, guns blazing, no matter how much she wanted to. If everything went according to plan, they would be out of Area 51 and back into the vortex in a few hours.
"Open it up," she said. The guards took up positions on either side of the door, and Ogden opened the cell by swiping the resource card across the lock and entering a three-stroke chorded key combination.
And there, finally, after two months of planning and searching, was the Doctor.
Dressed in olive drab scrubs, he was sitting on the side edge of a bunk in the corner, elbows on widespread knees, fingers interlocked over the top of his bent head, still as a statue. He didn't react to the door unlatching, but as it scraped open across the uneven corridor floor he slowly and deliberately unlaced his fingers, and looked up. In the harsh light River caught a flash of something--flat, round, black, metallic--at the nape of his neck, before his face came into view, and her breath caught in her throat.
He looked awful. His hair was long and unkempt, spiked at odd angles from where he'd been resting his fingers. His ragged beard seemed to have grown unchecked for weeks, and his half-lidded eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and fatigue. He frowned in their direction, furrowing his brow in concentration. His eyes--usually so bright, so focused--wandered the length and breadth of the doorway until he seemed to catch himself and blinked, staring blankly past Ogden, Duvall and James as they filed into the room. He didn't acknowledge River at all.
It was obvious he couldn't see a thing.
"Back again, are you?" he asked, sounding tired and intellectually bored. That was almost normal, but River could hear how his consonants were just slightly more accentuated and calculated, and how his cadence was just slightly slower than his usual speech patterns. Something--something else--was wrong. She watched as he tensed, fingers grabbing at the thin mattress by his side like an anchor, and closed his useless eyes. "And with someone new--?" he started.
Ogden immediately checked his data pad. Beside him, Duvall drew out a plastic stylus and vied for a chance to annotate the screen, eyes traveling back and forth from the Doctor to the readout. James left the scientists to their impromptu research summit and fished at his belt for a set of handcuffs. River simply stood at the doorway, in shocked silence.
The Doctor remained oblivious to the activity around him. His outward concentration receded as he reached some kind of realization, and he relaxed, straightening his arms at his sides and drumming curious fingers against the edge of the mattress. This time he did look directly at the doorway where River stood. He took a breath and gave a slow, sly smile.
"Hello, sweetie," he said.
Tension in the room snapped as Sergeant James took two steps and hit the Doctor hard on the cheek. "Show some respect!" he snarled. The Doctor was blindsided but absorbed the blow, falling backward onto his elbows.
River broke out of her daze and was at James' side in a heartbeat, catching his fist in the air as he brought it back again.
"Sergeant!" Ogden exclaimed.
James' eyes stayed focused on the Doctor, but River felt the trigger impulse of another blow leach out of his fist, and she let him shake his hand free of her grip. "I won't tolerate that kind of attitude toward women," James warned.
"And I don't need your chivalry," River said icily.
On the bunk, the Doctor brought a hand to his cheek, wincing and testing the spot of impact for blood. "Hello, Sergeant James," he added.
"Just watch your mouth," James replied.
Duvall glanced witheringly at the sergeant. "You know he can't hear you."
"I know he has a history of lying." James aimed his words at the Doctor, but received no recognition from him.
Duvall sighed, crossing the room. He chased the Doctor's hands from his face and bent his head forward, clinically but not gently, to reveal the disc at the back of his neck. It was roughly an inch in diameter, its polished titanium surface reflecting light from a series of raised radial serrations emanating from the flat centerpiece. The Doctor froze, sucking in a hiss of pain when Duvall's fingers traced the edge of the device. He twisted the bedsheets in his hands and strangled a cry, as Duvall explained, "He can't lie about this. We've shown you the readings."
"Please--" the Doctor gasped, all bravado gone from his voice. "Please stop that."
"Interesting," Duvall remarked, leaning closer. "There's no scar tissue at all." He brushed the center of the disc and this time the Doctor couldn't keep from crying out. He let out a grunt of shock and pain and a hissed "Stop!" extended to three trembling syllables.
"Henry, let him go," said Ogden.
Duvall shrugged and released him. The Doctor sat up immediately, smoothing his thin sleeves with a flick of his wrists and stopping his hand half-way toward the act of straightening a nonexistent bow tie. "Thank you. Much better." He sniffed to cover a shaky breath, and obediently held out his hands. "So, have we finished with the bickering and violence for today? Are we ready to go?"
His blank eyes looked right at River as he spoke, and her heart fell. Not yet, my love, she willed at him. There were too many people here, and too much uncertainty. But of course, she could communicate nothing to him. The only answer he received was James snapping cuffs around his wrists and hauling him up from the bunk.
"Get him to the lab," Ogden said to his colleague, then turned to the sergeant. "James, I'd like a word with you and Doctor Hamilton."
Duvall signaled the guards from their posts. James reluctantly handed the prisoner over and ushered them out.
"No need to rush," the Doctor muttered as he passed by. The sound of footsteps and clinking chains faded down the corridor as he was led away, and farther off, the Doctor's voice rose and resonated into an indistinct, blithe bellow of a chant or song. There was a buzz from the connecting door, and then they were gone.
Ogden turned to the sergeant in the ensuing silence. He was calm and collected, and obviously furious. "I would appreciate it if you refrained from damaging my experiments. I am of course willing to work with contracted experts, but we had a crucial reading back there that was interrupted by your… sensibilities."
"Sir," James countered. "This prisoner is patient, opportunistic, and dangerous. He has a history of devious and manipulative behavior--"
"I can see that, Sergeant. It took two weeks of interrogations for him to learn exactly how to push your buttons--a skill, I might add, which he continues to excel at." Ogden tapped the data pad against his hand. "Remind me what you learned in return?"
James brushed off the rebuke. "Major, I have the Colonel's authority on this matter. If something is wrong with your device it could be putting this whole base at risk! He's a completely unknown species--"
"SMM is proven technology, even for uncategorized aliens," Ogden said. "It's based on physiological constants. He can't subvert it."
"He's certainly subverting something!" James said. "He must have seen Doctor Hamilton in the doorway--"
"Impossible."
"He heard her footsteps then. Her heels--"
"Heels," Ogden repeated, looking down at River's shoes. Area 51 was no place for anything fancy; she was dressed in a business skirt, nylons, and military loafers.
"If not that, then how--?"
"We don't know!" Ogden finally exclaimed. "That's what we're trying to find out! Good God, man, we're trying to do good science here!"
Ogden ended the argument without officially pulling rank. He simply glared at Sergeant James, and let five seconds of silence speak for itself. With no further protests, he turned to River. "Despite what you may have heard from Colonel Caldwell's contingent," he indicated Sergeant James with a nod, "it's not a malfunction in the device. We're certain it's a sensory anomaly, possibly something completely new. We've controlled for everything else."
River took a moment to assimilate as much of this barrage of information as she could. She quickly catalogued facts, updated her list of current assets, crushed an irritating swell of rising panic, and then turned and smiled condescendingly at Sergeant James.
"Actually, I haven't been briefed on that yet," she said.
Ogden gave a short sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fantastic."
**
|Part 2
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